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Father; -- a word sometimes used by children. I was never so bethumped withwords, Since I first called my brother's father dad. Shak.

e parent; -- used of beasts, especially of quadrupeds; sometimes applied in contempt to a human mother. Our sire and dam, now confined to horses, are a relic of this age (13th century) . . . .Dame is used of a hen; we now make a great difference between dame and dam. T. L. K. Oliphant. The dam runs lowing up end down,…

A mother; -- applied to human beings and quadrupeds. [Obs.] Chaucer.

Moisture; humidity; fog; fogginess; vapor. Night . . . with black air Accompanied, with damps and dreadful gloom. Milton.

Moderate humidity; moisture; fogginess; moistness.

; a maiden. With her train of damsels she was gone, In shady walks the scorching heat to shum. Dryden. Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, . . . Goes by to towered Cameleot. Tennyson.

A little fellow; -- in sport or contempt. "A dandiprat hop-thumb." Stanyhurst.

Damp; moist; humid; wet. Now that the fields are dank and ways are mire. Milton. Cheerless watches on the cold, dank ground. Trench.

A reckless fellow. Also used adjectively; as, dare-devil excitement. A humorous dare-devil -- the very man To suit my prpose. Ld. Lytton.

Shak. A deep melancholy took possesion of him, and gave a dark tinge to all his views of human nature. Macaulay. There is, in every true woman-s heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity. W. Irving.

y, however, that, without any daubing at all, I am very sincerely your very affectionate, humble servant. Smollett.

The female offspring of the human species; a female child of any age; -- applied also to the lower animals.

A naked human skull as the emblem of death; the head of the conventional personification of death. I had rather be married to a death's-head with a bone in his mouth. Shak. Death's-head moth (Zoöl.), a very large European moth (Acherontia atropos), so called from a figure resembling a human skull on the back of the tho…

The quality of being debonair; good humor; gentleness; courtesy. Sterne.

satisfying; as, a decent fortune; a decent person. A decent retreat in the mutability of human affairs. Burke. -- De"cent*ly, adv. -- De"cent*ness, n.

A group of Mammalia in which a decidua is thrown off with, or after, the fetus, as in the human species.

Capable of being brought down. [Obs.] As if God [were] deducible to human imbecility. State Trials (1649).

efer; -- with to. Hereupon the commissioners . . . deferred the matter to the Earl of Northumberland. Bacon.

A discharge or flowing of humors or fluid matter, as from the nose in catarrh; -- sometimes used synonymously with inflammation. Dunglison.

The act of humbling or abasing one's self. Adoration implies submission and dejection. Bp. Pearson.